Leah Novick (born 1932) grew up in Scranton, New Jersey. In her teens, her family moved to New York City where she attended both public high school and the Herzliah Hebrew Institute and considered herself a Zionist. Novick graduated from Brooklyn College and earned a master's degree in public policy. In the late 1950s, she was part of sit-ins and lie-ins to integrate West Chester, Pennsylvania’s swimming pools. Later she moved to Westchester County, New York, where she helped organize Jewish groups to attend the 1963 March on Washington.

Novick ran unsuccessfully for the New York state legislature in 1970 and moved to Washington to work as chief aide for Bella Abzug, an American lawyer, U.S. Representative, social activist, and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1977, Novick helped to coordinate the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. In 1978, she worked as a guest professor at Stanford. During much of the 1980s she taught at UC Berkeley’s graduate school of public policy.

After a career in politics advocating for civil rights and feminist values, Novick became an influential leader, teacher, writer, and rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement. Ordained as a Jewish Renewal rabbi in 1987, Novick has been a teaching ambassador for ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, giving lectures, leading retreats, and teaching courses throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. She founded two Renewal communities, Beit Shekhinah in Berkeley and Shabbos in Carmel in the Monterey area, and in the 1990s she helped found OHALAH: the Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal. Novick also founded ALEPH’s yearly retreat group Ruach Ha’Aretz, “Spirit of the Earth,” which meets in different locations every summer. In 2008, she published her book On the Wings of Shekhinah: Rediscovering Judaism’s Divine Feminism, and is currently working on a number of other projects including a book on notable women throughout Jewish history.

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For more information, please visit her website: Rabbi Leah - Kabbalah by the Sea

This collection contains a number of recorded sermons, lectures, and educational programs Novick gave on women’s spirituality, female rabbis, and Kabbalah; videos taken at various events she was involved in; writings published in various newspapers and magazines; and materials related to a performance piece she created for Chanukah in 2000, called the Peaceful Maccabee Project. This collection also contains some materials from her political career, including her unsuccessful campaign for the New York State Legislature in 1970, and her time as chief aide to U.S. Representative Bella Abzug. As part of her ongoing legacy project, the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collection will continue to gather materials documenting her many contributions to the Jewish Renewal Movement.